Blog 1

Experience setting up GitHub and publishing to Pages

17^thFebruary 2025

Setting up my new repository for GitHub was easy, as I gained that skill through lots of practice last year. Publishing to Pages was a new experience, but I didn’t find it too difficult. It is something that I will need to practice, so that I am not reliant on slides for this process.

Reflections on readings – relating to my experiences today

Simon Harpers reading, ‘‘As we May Think’ at 65,’ was an eye-opening read. He discussed the relevance of Vannevar Bush’s ideas to this day. What stood out to me was Bush’s ideas on the mind’s associative nature. Bush believed that information should be organized to reflect human cognition. In today’s time there is an overwhelming amount of information out there, but it is organised in such a way that it is not so overwhelming, and our brains can recognise the links between everything. I see that today’s web reflects his ideas of associative linking and personalization, but it also focuses a lot on algorithms and profit, which steps away from Bush’s ideas. It was interesting how Bush did not embrace technology but focused more on the philosophy of humanity’s relationships with knowledge. Harpers reading helped me understand Bush’s ideas and how it shaped the the web. (Harper, 2010, pg. 1-3) Interesting things I have found about the history of the web I was drawn to Jay’s reading, ‘Flash And Its History On The Web,’ (The History of the Web, 2017) as I used to be an avid user of Flash. It is interesting to read about the journey of this platform and how it came to its end. I was a user during the end of its period, so I got the more polished version of Flash, but it was truly heartbreaking when I wasn’t allowed to use it again. Seeing the evolution of Flash, opens your eyes to the constant change of technology and companies. Many companies and users were drawn to Flash, as it had many features which had never been seen before. But then bigger and arguably better companies bought out these features, like Google buying YouTube. Flash was such a big hit for its 10 years, but once companies found better ways, Flash started hitting its decline. Its fascinating to see Jay Hoffmann’s timeline of ‘The History of The Web.’ (The History of the Web, 2024) This timeline highlights key developments in the web’s history. Mobiles evolution is something that stood out to me in this timeline. Phones is an object that we all use in our everyday lives, seeing its evolution over time, just shows how much can change in 10 years. The first launch of the iPhone was in 2007, which evolved so rapidly. Where in 2017 the web was accessible on mobiles. This accessibility and portability can be linked back to Bush’s ideas of making information accessible whenever and wherever.

Goals for this course

My goal for this course is mostly to gain as much knowledge as I can. Interactive Media is something very new to me, unless we count the knowledge that CAT gave me in high school.

References

Harper, S. (2010). ‘As We May Think’ at 65. ACM SIGWEB Newsletter, (Spring), pp.1–3. doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/1721871.1721872.
The History of the Web. (2017). Flash And Its History On The Web. [online] Available at: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-story-of-flash/.
The History ofhttps://thehistoryoftheweb.com/the-story-of-flash/ the Web. (2024). Timeline - The History of the Web. [online] Available at: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/timeline/?date_from=2002&date_to=2017 [Accessed 16 Feb. 2025].